Peaches Geldof's tragic death: mourning in the modern world is communal

Since the news broke of Peaches Geldof's death, the outpouring of public grief
has been huge. But where does this sudden collective sorrow come from? Claire
Cohen analyses the changing face of mourning

RIP. A sad smiley face. That's how it starts; three letters and an emoticon that open the floodgates to an outpouring of digital sorrow.

When a famous person loses their life, we no longer stop to digest the news and work out exactly what – if anything - it means to us. There's no period of quiet contemplation. Instead, we take to the Internet.

A set of accepted behaviours has been established for expressing grief on social media sites. First on the scene are those on the scent of a breaking news story. Then comes disbelief, genuine sadness and fellow celebrities offering their 140 characters of condolence. Finally, a procession of pictures, poignant quotes and personal anecdotes.

In this higgledy-piggeldy way, we come together to mourn in the modern world. The emotional response we experience when a famous person dies no longer lurks like a turbulent secret somewhere beneath our skin. It's exposed; a collective lump in the throat.

The digital response is often breathtaking in its speed. Within 15 minutes of that first message from @BBCBreaking (now retweeted 24,000 times and counting), Peaches’ Wikipedia entry had been updated. Overnight, her Twitter account gained more than100,000 new followers. The Twitter hashtag #RIPPeaches is still trending (at the time of writing).

Where does it come from – this sudden collective sorrow?

Some trace its origins to Princess Diana’s death. Don’t you remember - they cry – how the nation came together? The toppling mounds of cellophane wrapped flowers, the heart-shaped notes, the books of remembrance, candles and crowds of people at the Palace gates?

Certainly, this was my first experience of such a public outpouring. Aged just 13, I struggled to understand my mother's heartfelt distress and, on visiting Kensington, remember gazing out across the sea of people - hand-in-hand, dabbing their eyes - and pondering what it was all about. I only knew then that I was supposed to feel devastation at the loss of this lovely woman who I'd only seen on television.

While I'm not convinced that our national mode of mourning changed for good that day, I do think there it highlighted certain expectations of how it looks to grieve. After all, it’s something we’ve been doing for centuries. The Romans held elaborate public ceremonies for their dead. In the past, entire villages have turned out in respect of a beloved local figure. Mob funerals traditionally attract sobbing crowds (and quite a few police cars). While the final processions of British monarchs have historically seen thousands of people line the streets.

It’s just that, today, we line-up to express our sadness online. It’s the immediacy of the digital world makes the whole thing seem knee-jerk; even competitive.

Reactions to Peaches Geldof’s awful and untimely passing on Monday, ranged from the shocked, to sad, to the speculative (going directly against advice from the Samaritans on reporting the death of someone in the public eye).

There, of course, some who made glib remarks and vile jokes (which I won’t give anymore screentime here). Many Twitter users reported unfollowing those who displayed something akin to delight at this latest tragedy.

To be crystal clear: nothing gives any of us the right to poke fun at the death of a 25-year-old woman; wife, mother, daughter and sister.

No, most of us didn’t know her, or any of the celebrities we’ve mourned for online.

But something about their death touches us and makes us reach out.

Seeking out our tribes

Psychologist, Dr Pamela Stephenson-Connolly told me: “It's human nature to seek fellow tribe members. We crave it. In cyberspace we are many, diverse tribes, but when we can agree on something - especially a powerful, primal emotion such as grief - we become united members of a far larger, fundamental, unbounded, pan-expressive, tribe. This is deeply comforting, in a way that manages to transcend the actual tragedy”’

There are many reasons we might seek that comfort. We may feel that the person has touched our own lives in some way. Not simply through the TV screen, or gossip pages – but in terms of real experience. A film star might take us back to a moment in childhood, now lost. Princess Diana touched many women who had themselves been in unhappy marriages and were devastated that her chance to move on has been cruelly snatched away. So often, we grieve as much for a time lost, as for the celebrity themselves.

We’re also able to feel empathy. It’s what makes us human. We’re touched by the passing of someone who somehow made the world a better or more interesting place. And we’re saddened for those left behind, who must endure their loss – after all, it could so easily be us. “Identifying with the family is part of our empathic response,” agrees Dr Stephenson-Connolly.

Such emotions are what make us socialised; not sociopaths. It’s also one of the reasons we cry at films, or when a dear character dies in a novel. Somewhere, somehow a human emotion has been triggered.

For the public, the shock of Peaches’s death comes from the loss of a young woman who many of us had followed since birth and who seemed to have found stability. Of course we’re upset. We’ve looked at her family snaps on Instagram, talked about her and worried for her; right from the moment, aged 11, that she opened the front door to photographers and asked them to lower their cameras out of respect for her dead mother. For her bereft family, the tragedy is that they have lost yet another young woman all too suddenly, all too soon.